Busboy

I talked to a guy who ran a wine store for a couple of years and he said that when they opened up, they decided to do away with the "X.95" pricing and just put it up to the next dollar. The switched back after a few months because they found that people were deterred by a $10 wine whereas that had no problem with a $9.95 bottle. Odd.

My impression of French and Italian haute cuisine is that it grew out of the cooking done for the nobles -- and later the very rich -- by chefs who had already invented competitive cooking by the 14th century, when geese were stuffed with troufled and gilded with real gold leaf and served by nights on horseback as part of 20-course meals. Happily, there's less of that now, but I would be curious what chefs were cooking for Indian nobility "back in the day." My experience with upscale Indian now seems to imply that, while it's excellent cooking, a home chef could easily acquire the tools and techniques (if not the genius with spicing and timing that good chefs have) to do a reasonable version at home. I know there's more there, but at some level it feels like we're getting special occasion home food -- like your French friends -- and not the more rarified preparations that equate to a Micheline-starred experience and trace back to the Bourbons.

Despite the growing number of Indian restaurants, I wonder if the population of diners willing to spend substantial money on an Indian dinner even remotely approaches the number that would dro $100 a person at French or Italian (or steakehouse) restaurant. A lot of upscale places draw a substantial quantity of business from customers who really don't care that much about the food. They are there for the buzz, or to impress someone, or for the atmosphere, or because they need to have a "big night" out but want to do so in surroundings that don't challenge them. Think about a tourist taking his wife out in NYC, or a conventioneer from Des Moins. I can take my parents to a French place when they visit, and get Dad to pick up the tab (you'd think I'd have outgrown that by now), but I couldn't take him to upscale Indian, and he would never take a client there. Even if quality cooking fills a room 75% full, that last 25% can be the margin between success and failure, especially on a high-end venture. Also, it's hard to sell wine with Indian food, especially the $200 a bottle stuff that puts money back in investors' pockets. And it's an education process. Most people probably discover Indian in low-ish rent spots that put a decent meal on the table but neither look look like "nice" restaurants not deliver the kind of nuanced cooking that makes people think in terms of name-brand chefs. When they cal their wives and say "let's go someplace night tonight" they're probably just not thinking about Indian. They haven't been conditioned. That being said, DC has an Indian restaurant with probably the most gracious dining room in the city, The Bombay Club, and it conditioned us so well that when the arguably better, though less gracious, Heritage of India opened, it was mobbed from the start.

Revolving restaurants always make me queasy, and I have a pretty strong stomach -- for the first couple of bottles of wine, anyway. Also, if you spend any time drinking in them, finding your table can be troublesome towards the end of the night. And I've never been to a restaurant with a view that serves anything above barely decent food. I guess with everyone there for the view there's no point flying in fresh loup de mer from Mareseilles when frozen shrimp will keep the place packed. Of course, I'm a sucker for a good view and will always buy an overpriced cocktail or two just to see what I can see. On my way to another restaurant.

A fine line indeed. Especially in a discipline like food writing, where there few formal credentials to separate the former from the latter. And, critical essay or review, isn't the "in my opnion" understood, the only unassailable authorites on nutmeg in rice pudding being God and Ducasse?

Good point -- same with martinis. One trouble with fresh lime juice -- aside from the fact that it just never tastes "right" -- is that it tends to cloud the drink. There are few things more bizarrly compelling than an icy gimlet, served up, casting its eerily transparent green glow atop the bar. It's like something from a science fiction movie, although after three or four you're looking more at tragedy or farce.

www.mulletsgalore.com Not for the fainthearted or easily offended.

Used to be a bar in Council Bluffs, Iowa called "The Office" same logic. "Where were you till midnight?" Can anyone confirm the actual existence of the legendary "He's Not Here"?

thanks

Recall, too, that for many people the quality of the food is a secondary consideration. Young, single or childless couples of any orientation living downtown -- especially if they're in a small apartment -- see the neighborhood spots as extensions of their living rooms. Finding a place where you can afford to get a bite three or four nights a week, that has a welcoming atmosphere and counts your friends among its customers is probably more important a lot of time than whether the chef has selected organic arugula and dressed it with Tuscany's finest extra virgin. Not that they're mutually exclusive, but on the whole, the latter is likely to be much more expensive and formal than the former. DC did have a well-regarded gay fine-dining restaurant, but it did not do well and eventually closed. It was, interstingly, once picketed by gay PETA members for serving foie gras, causing a little ruckus in the gay press for a couple of weeks, but I don't think that had to do with its closing.

One factual error in the website -- MD 20/20 was never really called "Mad Dog." It was Mogen David and originally marketed as a kosher wine, suitable for the hollidays. Several of my friends still recall their first experience with wine, after haveing been Bar/Bat Mitzvah'd, as being a hangover-inducing bout with Mad Dog during the Jewish hollidays. I still recall Gallo Pink Chablis as my favorite. Slightly frizzante and relatively weak, I could knock back a bottle before a high school dance and change fron nerd boy to dancing fool in about 20 minutes.

Here in DC there are a number of restaurants that could be termed "Gay restaurants," right off Dupont Circle, friendly neighborhood places of no particular merit note -- burger or spaghetti places, mostly. I think they're gay mostly by tradition, it's a mixed neightborhood and no one seems really to care who go into where. But if you go into (the legendary) Annie's Paramount you're probably in a 95% gay crowd, while next door at Peppers it's 50-50; the bar is straight while the dining room mixed. One place has a rainbow flag in the window, but I doubt that anyone would feel excluded. I've gotten a few looks at Annie's, which is one of the few place to get dinner after midnight in the area, but nothing hostile. They probably trying to figure out if my wife and I were confused tourists.

My wife explains that, before a social engagement , "a lady" (her mother, actually, who was very old school) puts on all the jewelry she wishes to wear, and then takes one piece off. I think that might be a good rule for first-person writing as well: Draw as much attention to yourself as you think appropriate, and then back off some. First drafts are always too long anyway, take the blue pencil to yourself before your subject.

The comparison between Bourdaine and Reichle is an illustration, not science. The science was done by the network marketing people, who spend a great deal of time and money trying to discover the differences between different demographic groups and exploit them. You can argue that it's all mojo, that men and women; blackes and whites; 18-35's and 35-50's all like exactly the same things, but you'd be arguing not just against stereotypes, but actual long-term detailed research. Of course, these are aggregates -- if women are more likely to like, say, Bridget Jones' Diary (forgive me for that example) than men, that is not to say that all women like it, or that no men do. There's always overlap, sometimes substantial. And my point, obviously poorly made, was not that women are more likely to be self-indulgent, which I define as a negative, but that judgements on what is self-indulgent and what is personal but not self- indulgent, may skew by gender. If somone handed you a randomly-selected, well-written contemporary novel, without revealing the auther, how many times out of ten do you think you could guess the gender of the writer after the first chapter? After the first page? Point on AB well-taken.

Thanks for the tip. I couldn't dig up the actual recipe on line - do they do anything besides sautee? Pancetta or braised greens or something?

You can write about yourself without being self indulgent, just as you can feed yourself without being gluttenous. And ability to tell a good story will cover a mutlitude of sins (MFK Fisher is gloriously self-indulgent, but she gets away with it). Self indulgent writing reminds me of the joke about the boorish first date who finally stops babbling on about his latest cars, accomplishments etc to say: "but enough about me, lets talk about you. What do you think about me?" Didn't mean to take a personal shot with the bolognese reference. I'm sure I'd love to hear about it -- and to hear briey about the man and the scene. As long as, in the end, you remembered you were wrting about FOOD.

"I might suggest that men and women see the line as lying in a different spot, and what I find icky another would find compelling, and that what I find compelling, another reader might find barren. " "Take out the attribution to gender, and I'm with you all the way. Because I doubt the network execs who made the decision to add in all that crap were female. " The gender of the execs was irrelevant -- they weren't making the decision based on personal preference, they were looking at the numbers and trying to expand a targeted audience. Just business. On the other hand, their numbers confirmed what a lot of people feel instinctually to be true and what has, at any rate become conventional wisdom: women are about feeling/nurtuting/emotional connection while men are about sex and tools. Compare recent meoirs by Ruth Reichle and Anthon Bourdaine.

I'll take some lumps for this, but... A couple of years back, ABC (or whomever) decided that the women who watched the Olympic Games were more interested in the "backstory" of the athletes particpating in the Games that the actually events and more traditionally jock-type coverage. The result, as we've all seen, has been a much-criticized proliferation (like morels in the spring) of 2-minute mini-dramas about athletes overcoming adversity to become a part of the Olympic Games. The networks read the ratings, however, and the mini-dramas keep coming. I say that because I find that the writers whom I find self -indulgent tend to skew female. Food is complicated stuff, and can be powerfully evocative. But it's easy to trip over the fine line between drawing a reader in with a well-turned anecdote or ecocation, and turning the article into a personal voyage of self discovery -- from Saveur to Oprah in three easy paragraphs. I might suggest that men and women see the line as lying in a different spot, and what I find icky another would find compelling, and that what I find compelling, another reader might find barren.

Not only food writing but featuring writing in general has been damaged by endless indulgent first-person drivel, in which the author seems far more interested in themselves, their feeling and reaction, their own pain, suffering and triumphs than the alleged subject of the stupid article. It's the flip side of those annoying food magazine articles which are more about the vinyard-owners' comely grandaughter and the beautiful people weilding the antique silver at the (gauzily photographed) soiree, than about the wine and food. Pulling back, there are some pieces that are by definition first person -- Mr. Leite's stove envy piece, and my own first (of two, so I'm more opinionated than published in this area) published piece, about appearing on a cooking show, for example. And there's really know non-awkward way to say something like "traditionally, chefs do x, but I've found that y works better in a home kitchen." Maybe it's the self-indulgence of so many writers -- who seem to think they are more important or interesting than their subject. It's like a drunk falling off the wagon, once they get the first snootfull ("My first bolognese was eaten at a small trattoria with my first love") they lose control completely.

Cooking the the roe, not the fish itself. I have enough credibility problems with my fishmonger ("yea, that white stuff. No the other white stuff. Gimme some of that. What's it called?") without asking him to filet the roe.

You don't mention if you want to be paid or if you have a way to survive without a decent salary. It would be interesting to know if French restaurants, like U.S. establishments, find that their interest in immigration regs declines in tandem with salary demands. In other words, would the chef take you as a dishwasher similar low status job despite regulations (where French Chefs traditionally begin their climb) in return for negligable salary demands on your part. Or, similarly, could you strike a deal with a chef where he pretends to be teaching officially and you are offically a student. Just in a Huck Finn mood and thinking of running away to France myself...

While we're on the subject, anyone have a couple of tips on home-cooking shad roe?

I find that it is a preferred cologne for elderly ladies, often Hispanic, who seem always to be dressed as though they are on their way to or from mass. Also, a little bit added to orange sections served with a light honey/sugar/cinnamon syrup gives everything a nice aromatic smell.

I bought my kid an all-clad omlette pan and hate it because the thing is so damn sticky. In fact, I find anything that's seriously fried -- potatoes say -- as opposed to something like lightly sauteeing green beans in olive oil, tends to stick to All-clads, even worse than to the aluminum pans. Finally got an old-fashioned non-stainless steel omlette pan, seasoned it up, and it works like a charm. So, does my technique with the All-Clad just suck, or do others have the same problems?

The New York (or does that go without saying here) Times' redoubtable Jonny Apple spent 3500 words recounting his search for the ultimate bouillabaisse. I'm having trouble posting the link, but if you go to www.nyt.com and do a search for bouillabaisse it should turn up, and is free. It was published in the travel section 8/7/02 and is, as always with RW, simultaneously pompous and illuminating.